EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — A new engine developed by Pratt & Whitney for commercial airliners and currently in flight testing contains turbine advances that could eventually wind up on the engine that powers the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a company executive said.
Pratt & Whitney, which is owned by United Technologies [UTX], tested its PW1200G engine mounted on a Boeing [BA] 747 test bed as recently as Monday.
The Pure Power Geared Turbofan (GTF) engine’s main feature is a gear box that allows the intake fan to spin at a different speed than the low pressure compressor and turbine to improve efficiency. That aspect of it could someday be suitable for military cargo planes, but not the F-35 because its engine is embedded in the airframe rather than mounted to a wing.
Instead, the GTF has advances in turbine and compressor technology that could be applied to upgrades to Pratt & Whitney’s F-135 engine used on the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built Joint Strike Fighter, said Bennett Croswell, the company’s president for military engines.
“There is technology in the GTF that we developed that we are considering for future upgrades for the F-135,” he said in an interview during Pratt & Whitney’s annual media day on Wednesday.
For example, the better performance high lift turbine air foils in the engine would reduce the number of air foils needed, thereby reducing costs and the cooling air required while increasing efficiency, he said.
Croswell said the company plans to test a technology demonstrator later this year that is being developed with the Air Force Research Laboratory. He said he was confident GTF technology will ultimately make its way to military applications, but said it would probably require higher degrees of thrust output to be used on military cargo plans.
“We could build a military engine around that core,” he said.